Lavrov urges the international community to use the opportunity for settling the Iranian nuclear issue

PETROPAVLOVSK KAMCHATSKY, November 16, /ITAR-TASS/. Iran is prepared to gradually resolve all of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s concerns and thus eliminate the causes of sanctions within a year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

He urged the international community to use the opportunity for settling the Iranian nuclear issue.

“I think the P5+1 is charged with the commitment to look for a solution, and the new Iranian leadership responds reciprocally. So we have a unique opportunity to register mutual understanding and start moving forward, especially since the Iranians say that they are ready to gradually resolve all of the IAEA questions within a year and thus eliminate the reasons for which the sanctions were imposed,” Lavrov told the Postskriptum television programme on Saturday, November 16.

Commenting on the results of his bilateral meetings with Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in New Delhi on the sidelines of ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting), Lavrov said their discussion had focused on Iran. “We exchanged our impressions from the ministerial talks in Geneva [on November 9]. Our shared impression is that we have a very good chance which we must not miss,” the minister said.

“The talks with the Iranian minister of foreign affairs confirmed that for the first time in many years both the P5+1 and Tehran are ready not just to present their positions, which in most cases do not coincide, but to look for points of contact. Such points have been determined and there are no more principled disagreements on issues that need to be handled in practical terms. These include the need to appropriately formalise the agreement in diplomatic language so that it were an actual joint document, not one imposed from the outside,” Lavrov said.